Chapter 551, page 550: A Strange Scene

After the battle ended, the water still contained murky, unsettled sediment and streaks of pale blue blood.

Norris and Ming each held onto an oxygen-supplying mycelial tentacle, replenishing the oxygen they had consumed. The oxygen-supplying mycelium visibly shrank.

Ming's clothes were practically tattered in the battle where there was only offense and no defense, yet there were no visible wounds on his exposed skin.

Norris had several small cuts on his body, but thanks to his powerful self-healing ability, they had mostly healed.

Although he doesn't have the absurd "physical immunity" of Ming, he does possess "physical resistance LV10," making it difficult for ordinary attacks to cause him substantial damage.

The merman guide was the most seriously injured.

While Norris was doing everything he could to rescue Ming, the merman was also surrounded by three enemies.

By the time Norris remotely directed Jida to come to the rescue, the merman's arm had already been severed, and he was currently pressing a dark green ointment with a strong seaweed and mineral scent firmly onto the cut to stop the bleeding.

Norris swam over and, to the fishman's puzzled look, picked up the floating severed arm.

He thought about taking it back, and perhaps he could try to help the fishman return by using mycelial symbiosis.

But the fish-man's eyes at that moment probably thought that this human wanted to collect its limbs, or... worse.

Language barriers are always an obstacle.

"The mushroom farm is still the best," Norris thought to himself.

There, even people of different races can communicate without barriers through the mushroom network.

After hastily tending to its wounds, the merman immediately struggled to its side and rushed to the base of the statue. With its only remaining hand, it trembled as it stroked the stone base, which had been ravaged by the monsters, and made a low, sorrowful gurgling sound in its throat, as if mourning or repenting for its failure to protect it.

Ming looked up at the female deity statue, which was over twenty meters tall, with tentacles that resembled hair and a blurred face, and asked curiously, "Who is this statue?"

“The Grim Reaper, Neferella, I suppose.” Norris looked up as well, his tone uncertain. “Isn’t it said that these merfolk worship her? But… this is the first time I’ve seen a statue of the Grim Reaper in person. So this is what she looks like.”

"What's the point of these gods?" Ming asked, somewhat puzzled. "In the deathmatch arena, I occasionally encounter guys who, on their deathbed, plead for help from some god of light. The god of light has never saved anyone, so this god of death is probably the same, right?"

Norris shrugged; he shared a similar view.

Before meeting the boss, he could barely be considered a general believer in the God of Light, but that deity had clearly never even glanced at a nobody like him.

“Don’t say these things in front of the merfolk,” Norris warned. “The boss specifically told us before we came not to provoke them because of religious issues.”

Ming immediately nodded seriously, his eyes filled with solemnity.

The boss's instructions must be strictly followed!

Norris and Ming were unaware that the oxygen they were receiving was provided by a specially made Puji with knight-level combat power.

Faced with an enemy of unknown strength, how could Lin Jun really just throw Ming out and then completely abandon him?

Knight Puji kept an eye on the battlefield and only refrained from intervening directly after confirming that the threat was within a controllable range, treating it as a practical training exercise for the two of them.

At this moment, Lin Jun's attention also turned to the statue of the God of Death, but his perspective was completely different from Norris and Ming's.

【Inspiration LV8】

This idol... it's flashing!

This is the first time this has happened.

Not only was it the first time I had ever seen a soul that appeared and disappeared at the same time, but it was also the first time I had ever seen signs of a soul in a purely inanimate object like a stone statue!

Appearing inside the statue of the Grim Reaper... Could this be the soul of the Grim Reaper himself?

However, Lin Jun had also observed the statues in the Church of the God of Light in the human world. Apart from being exquisitely and solemnly carved, those statues were just stones, without any special traces inside.

Lin Jun tried to touch the stone statue with her tentacles, but nothing happened.

Norris and Ming below did not forget Lin Jun's mission.

Jida clasped his arms together, trapping the last living seafood monster.

It was very fresh and struggled with great force, but unfortunately, under the absolute power of Jida, all resistance was futile.

The three men, carrying the captive, cautiously returned along the same route and led it to the rift entrance room leading to the Puji Dungeon.

This space has now completely changed.

In the water, clusters of broad, flexible mycelial kelp sway like an underwater forest. Around their edges grow fluorescent mushrooms, emitting a faint blue, pale green, and light purple glow.

Above our heads, near the once empty water surface, a layer of long, continuous mycelial algae floats, like an inverted, glowing grassland, also dotted with twinkling fluorescent lights.

Each point of light is not bright, but when hundreds or thousands of points of light come together, it is as if the entire starry sky has been brought into the water, with the Milky Way hanging upside down. In this deep underwater world, a dreamlike scene that is both strange and exceptionally moving is created.

If the seafood monster, which was being tightly bound by several strands of mycelium and dragged into the depths of this "sea of ​​stars," hadn't let out such a shrill and painful scream, Norris might have had more time to appreciate the scenery.

Beneath the monster's bluish-gray carapace, mycelium wriggled, and plump, fluorescent mushrooms tore through the flesh and forced their way out from the gaps in the carapace.

Pale blue blood and broken muscle fibers were ruthlessly squeezed out by the newly formed bacteria and mixed into the water.

The monster howled in pain, but the mycelium did not stop for a moment.

Its four compound eyes, which originally shimmered with blue light, were replaced one by one. The swollen mushroom body burst the lens from the inside, and finally, four fluorescent mushrooms of different colors slowly bloomed in the empty eye sockets.

When the monster's last distorted wail finally ceased, turning into a string of powerless bubbles, a lifeless mushroom puppet quietly floated in the beautiful "galaxy".

Norris quietly left the room; he felt a little unwell in his stomach.

Ming, on the other hand, watched with great interest, his eyes filled with pure curiosity, as if he were watching a special magic show.

Lin Jun ignored their reactions.

Because at this moment, he was completely immersed in a strange scene that had suddenly appeared.

...

The moment the mycelium successfully parasitized the monster and established a connection, this scene crashed into Lin Jun's consciousness.

On the dark, desolate, flat land, countless coffins were neatly arranged.

Row upon row, column upon column, all neat and orderly, stretching towards the horizon until they disappear into the distant, hazy darkness.

In the far, far distance, where the earth seems to meet an even deeper darkness, stands a colossal, incomparably majestic shadow, like a strangely shaped mountain.

Lin Jun subconsciously looked up at the sky above this space.

There was nothing there—no sun, no moon, no stars—just pure darkness.

What is this thing?

(End of this chapter)